KERNAN, JOSEPH EUGENE
Name: Joseph Eugene Kernan Branch/Rank: UNITED STATES NAVY/O2 Unit: RECON ATTACK SQUADRON 7 Date of Birth: Home City of Record: WASHINGTON DC Date of Loss: 07 May 72 Country of Loss: NORTH VIETNAM Loss Coordinates: 195900 North 1055100 East Status (in 1973): Returnee Category: Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RA5C Missions: Other Personnel in Incident: CLARENCE POLFER, returnee Refno:
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action Combat Casualty File, information from Indiana's Lt. Governor's Home page. Updated 2002.
REMARKS: 730328 RELEASED BY DRV
Synopsis: Joe Kernan, the oldest of nine children, graduated from St. Joseph's High School in South Bend. He was a catcher on the baseball team at the University of Notre Dame, and graduated from there in 1968 with a degree in Government. He was the commencement speaker and received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater in 1998.
Kernan entered the United States Navy in 1969 and served as a naval flight officer aboard the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. In May of 1972, Kernan was shot down by the enemy while on a reconnaissance mission over North Viet Nam. He was held as a prisoner of war for 11 months. Kernan was repatriated in 1973 and continued on active duty with the Navy until December of 1974. For his service, Kernan received numerous awards, including the Navy Commendation Medal, two Purple Hearts and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After completing his Naval service, Kernan worked for Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati in 1975. He then returned to South Bend, where he worked for both the Schwarz Paper Company and the MacWilliams Corporation. He was South Bend's city controller from 1980 to 1984.
Joe Kernan was elected mayor of South Bend in 1987. He served as the city's mayor for nine years, longer than any other mayor in the city's history.
In 1996, Lt. Governor Joe Kernan and Governor Frank O'Bannon were elected to the top two positions in Indiana government. As lieutenant governor of Indiana, Kernan serves as the president of the Indiana Senate, the director of the Indiana Department of Commerce and as the commissioner of Agriculture.
Joe and his wife, Maggie, were married in 1974. They have a home in South Bend, where Maggie works for 1st Source Bank. She is a Purdue University graduate, who is now a senior vice-president and the director of marketing at the bank. Maggie is also active in community service, and has been mentoring a child for five years through a South Bend Community Schools program.
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Associated Press Newswires Friday, May 3, 2002
Thirty years later, Kernan relects on POW days By MIKE SMITH
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - This Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan will do what he has done nearly every May 7th for 29 years.
He will play some golf, eat a pizza and drink some beer.
It is a ritual of simplicities that Kernan uses to mark May 7, 1972, the day he ejected from his Navy reconnaissance plane after it was hit during a mission over North Vietnam. Tuesday is the 30th anniversary of that day, which began an 11-month ordeal as a prisoner of war.
Kernan, who is widely expected to be the Democratic nominee for governor in 2004, talks casually about his ordeal from the spacious Statehouse office he has occupied since 1997.
He recalls the sensation of sunlight flooding the cockpit after he pulled the cord to bail out. He blacked out from the force, however, and doesn't remember anything about the fall. When he regained consciousness, he was lying in front of a hut, surrounded by villagers - mostly boys, women and elderly - many of them shouting.
"I'm 5-foot-9 and have a helmet on, I'm wearing a flight suit and have a .38-caliber revolver in my holster, and I must look like something from Mars," Kernan said.
Stripped down to a T-shirt and undershorts, he was blindfolded and ushered away, likely by members of a local militia, and ended up hours later - he thinks - in the town of Thanh Hoa.
Despite the shock and blindness of those initial hours, Kernan said he was rational enough to wonder whether he had bailed out too soon. Had the pilot managed to regain control of the plane and fly it back to the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Tonkin?
He got the answer within hours, still blindfolded, when he heard the voice of the pilot say, "Jesus Christ, where in the (expletive) are we now?"
"I was very sad that he'd been shot down, but I was very glad I hadn't jumped out of a good airplane," Kernan said, recalling the details as if they were yesterday.
The next day, Kernan was driven to Hanoi, to a prison the American POWs called "The Zoo." He spent the first month isolated in a 12-by-12 feet room. He was interrogated, but not severely, being lucky in age, rank and timing in the war.
He had graduated from Notre Dame and enlisted in the Navy only three years prior, and was no military big shot.
U.S. bombing of North Vietnam intensified to new levels during the ensuing months, but so did peace negotiations, and POWs were regarded more as bargaining chips to the North Vietnamese. Kernan escaped the torture and deprivation many of his predecessors endured.
The worst day of his 11 months and 20 days of captivity came early on, he said, when he talked with another POW.
"He told me that our escort had lost us and that we were presumed dead," Kernan said. "My family thought I was dead, and if the Navy thought I was dead, the thing that goes through your mind is that there's no reason for these guys to keep me alive."
But Kernan said he never lost hope he would someday come home.
He ate what he was fed. For most of the first nine months, it was pumpkin soup, twice a day. Just pieces of pumpkin boiled in water. Sometimes there was a side dish - a piece of pork fat or fish heads or soybean cake.
"No pumpkin has passed these lips in 29 years, nor will it ever again," Kernan said, smiling.
In the latter months, he spent the time with a group of eight to 12 other POWs, doing menial tasks, playing cards, and listening intently to the Vietnamese radio broadcasts over a compound loudspeaker for four words that gave them hope.
They were Kissinger, Le Duc Tho - Kissinger's North Vietnamese counterpart in peace negotiations - Paris, where the talks were being held, and hoa binh - which is "peace" in Vietnamese.
When they heard them, he said, "Your imagination runs wild as to what might be happening."
On Feb. 12, 1973, Kernan and the others knew a peace deal was real when they saw American C-141 aircraft flying into Hanoi. On March 27, Kernan was in the last group of POWs picked up to go home.
When he returned to the United States, Kernan says he would often hit the road, "driving down the highway looking for adventure," with no particular place to go.
"I've been in three accidents in my life and all of them were within six months of coming home," Kernan said. "I mean, I busted up a couple of cars. I wasn't very careful."
Kernan says he remembers every May 7th "without question," but some March 27ths go by that he doesn't remember until a day or a week later.
"I think it's because if there hadn't have been a May 7th, there never would have been a March 27th," Kernan said. "It was the day my life changed."
Kernan is busy now trying to lay a groundwork for compromise during the upcoming special session, when lawmakers will return to the Statehouse on Gov. Frank O'Bannon's orders to work on balancing the state's budget and restructuring taxes.
Getting Democrats and Republicans to agree on a solution has been elusive so far. It's a political battle that could get very ugly, and its outcome could prove pivotal in Kernan's expected run for governor in 2004.
But his time as a prisoner of war helps him put things in perspective.
"I don't have many bad days," he said.
It's a perspective that Maggie Kernan, Joe's wife since 1974, has seen in her husband for years.
"Because of his personality and optimistic outlook, he has been able to take it and make something out of it that is positive," she said. "He will talk about doing something tough and difficult and say, 'What are they going to do, send me to jail? I've already been there."'
She said her husband often is asked about his experience, and he will willingly talk about some of it. But she suspects there is more to the story.
"I think there is a lot that he doesn't talk about," she said.